When you’ve grown up in a world that dictates how women should act and look, nothing is more refreshing than indulging in a book featuring characters who completely go against these societal expectations.
Despite common belief, the ‘unhinged woman’ trope has been around for a while – the unnamed narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), Bertha Mason of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1623)… The list goes on.
Recently, however, this trope has seen a significant spike in popularity within literary fiction.
This emerging popularity raises questions about whether these characters are genuinely unhinged or simply defy the female stereotype of being accommodating to men, nurturing, polite, and so on.
What Defines the ‘Unhinged Woman’?
The ‘unhinged woman’ is often characterised by the following traits:
- Reckless
- Self-destructive
- Chaotic
- Morally grey
- Selfish
- Insecure
- Emotionally charged
- Unlikeable
Why Is the ‘Unhinged Woman’ Trope So Appealing to Readers?
In short, the reason why the ‘unhinged woman’ trope is so popular amongst female readers in particular is because it is both relatable and shocking. How does any woman keep her composure in a world where she is often ignored, underestimated, and attacked? These ‘unhinged’ protagonists in books are essentially fictional representations of the thoughts and emotions experienced by modern women.
Rejecting Stereotypes
*Spoilers ahead*
Take the unnamed narrator in Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Suffering from depression, her objective is to get as many sleeping pills as possible to sleep for a year in an effort to reset her life. Moshfegh depicts this narrator as a very candid representation of depression, going beyond the superficial portrayal of simply sleeping excessively and being socially awkward. Instead, she explores the harsh and often neglected realities of mental health. If you Google, ‘unhinged women books’, this book is always at the top. People resonate with this book so much because it’s relatable. Instead of equating depression to a woman with a messy bun who overslept, it depicts a character who isolates herself, lacks enthusiasm, isn’t a good friend, neglects hygiene, and doesn’t help herself due to severe depression. This raw portrayal of reality allows readers to immerse themselves in characters that feel authentic, not fabricated. This is considered ‘unhinged’ because women in films, books, and TV have historically been portrayed in unrealistic ways, unlike the raw portrayal seen through these kinds of characters.
Similarly, Lynne Tillman’s novel Weird Fucks follows a woman recounting her sexual experiences with every man she sleeps with. This narrative rejects long-standing societal expectations about women’s sexual appetites – namely, that women should have fewer sexual partners than men and that enjoying sex somehow makes them impure. Readers are drawn to novels like this not only because they reject these stereotypes but because they do so in a radical, unapologetic manner. The story is shocking, deliberate, purposeful, and brutally honest, making it a powerful counter-narrative to traditional views on women’s sexuality.
Becoming The Villian
While the characters mentioned above are women rejecting stereotypes, many of these ‘unhinged women’ go beyond that—they are violent, rude, obsessive, and even murderous.
If we consider some of the most iconic villains in literature, they are mostly men: Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs (1988), Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991), and Lord Voldemort of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (originally published in 1991). These characters are murderous, violent, and angry. When people think of a villain in literature, they usually envision a man, as this has become a common stereotype.
This significant and modern shift in literature has cast women as villains, which is refreshingly taboo for readers. As we have become so accustomed to men being portrayed as violent characters capable of murder, novels like Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2022), Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger (2020), and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer (2018) are all the more exciting, cathartic, and unputdownable.
Sheena Patel On the ‘Unhinged Woman’ Trope
Sheena Patel, the author of I’m a Fan – a novel about a woman consumed by obsession and social status – expresses her thoughts on the ‘unhinged woman’ trope, commenting that:
“I don’t think that it is a universal love. There seems to be an expectation that characters need to be good – in a way that most people in real life aren’t that cut and dried. They also seem to think people do the right thing which is often not what happens. When I wrote ‘I’m a Fan’ I wasn’t aware of a trope as such – and anyway, this trope is more often white women who get to be written about that way”.
Race in the ‘Unhinged Woman’ Trope
As Patel mentioned, this trope more often features white women being portrayed in this manner. Women of color, however, must contend not only with gender stereotypes but also with racial stereotypes. There is still a long way to go before all women can be accepted as raw, authentic, and even likable in their most ‘unlikeable’, authentic forms.
Take Sally Rooney’s Normal People, for example. The female protagonist Marianne embodies the ‘literary sad girl’ trope. She is portrayed as unhinged because she self-destructs and fails to look after her emotions and well-being. In 2021, Rooney faced some backlash for this novel, as critics suggested it should be called ‘White People’ due to the lack of characters of colour. This was a criticism faced by all of her books, suggesting that Rooney only writes about sad, highly educated, white women. Consider the popularity Normal People has gained – it’s beautifully sad, but its plot lacks significant diversity. It even got adapted into a BBC series. This reflects how we often overlook more diverse works, and it highlights how the ‘unhinged woman’ trope typically favours white women.
In the video essay Fleabag is Not a Femcel, the narrator discusses how media like Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation feature white protagonists who “check out of the real world”. Writer Emmeline Klein calls this trend “dissociative feminism”, an identity that people on social media, such as TikTok, have readily adopted to simply give up – the decision to check out and dissociate. Klein argues this is a reaction to the overly positive “you can do it, girly!” feminism, noting that this form of detachment is a privilege predominantly available to white women, while marginalized women cannot simply ignore their oppression.
Books That Explore the ‘Unhinged Woman’ Trope
If you’re new to the ‘unhinged woman’ trope and are now intrigued (or you’re already a fan looking for more), here’s a list of books that perfectly encapsulate it:
- Boy Parts – Eliza Clark
- Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
- The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
- The Girls – Emma Cline
- Bunny – Mona Awad
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh
- Animals Eat Eachother – Elle Nash
- Weird Fucks – Lynne Tillman
- A Certain Hunger – Chelsea G. Summers
- Dolores – Lauren Aimee Curtis
- Nightbitch – Rachel Yoder
- The Vegetarian – Han Kang
- The Pisces – Melissa Broder
- Earthlings / Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata
- Luster – Raven Leilani
- Paradise Rot – Jenny Hval
Words by Emily Fletcher